Drake Wilson, 2011-01-11 20:19:34 -0700 :
[...]
> This doesn't leave much in the way of good options:
>
> - Having the user report bugs twice
[...]
> - Having the maintainer be the reporter of record for upstream
[...]
> - Having the maintainer forward the bug report but make the user the
> reporter
In a mid-term future, there's another possibility. Forges and bug
trackers have started thinking about, and implementing, infrastructure
to allow distributed bug tracking. There are at least two efforts in
that direction:
- the “SD” approach, where people have one local interface that talks to
possibly several remote trackers and syncs stuff around; SD already
has bridges to several engines.
- the “OSLC-CM” approach, where trackers implement a common API
allowing creation and manipulation of reports with a
machine-to-machine interface; this allows a single interface (think
dashboard) to display and interact with bugs independently of their
physical location.
If one or the other approach ends up generally usable, then a new
scenario emerges:
- end-user reports bug on the Debian BTS (or the Fedora Bugzilla, or the
Ubuntu Launchpad, or whatever it is Suse has);
- distro maintainer does some tagging if they consider the bug to be
upstream;
- upstream has a handful of accounts on the distros' BTS, and they see
the appropriately tagged bugs on their dashboard; they can interact
with the user from there, and possibly clone the bug into their own
local BTS.
We still face a scalability problem, in that upstreams may need an
account on each of the (major) distributions' BTS that require logins,
but in the end both upstream and the end user can work on the same
report. Whether that report is only on the distro's BTS or synced with
upstream's BTS is something that time will tell.
For reference, the OSLC-CM API is currently being implemented for
FusionForge, and I'm told Mantis already has it. I seem to recall work
was in progress for Bugzilla too, but I don't remember the details. On
the GUI client side, work is happening in Eclipse and probably others.
Roland.
--
Roland Mas
Indépendant en informatique libre -- Free software freelance
http://www.gnurandal.com/